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Category: Linguistics
Do languages other than English have a numerical concept similar to “dozens”, plural?
Modern Greek has borrowed duzina from Venetian, so that does get used. What is more idiomatic is the suffix –arja added on to tens-words, meaning “approximately”. So ðekarja “around ten”, triantarja “around thirty, thirty-odd”, eksindarja “around sixty, sixty-odd”. [EDIT: correction to hundreds] Also ðjakosarja “two hundred-odd”, triakosarja “three hundred odd”, up to enjakosarja “nine hundred-odd”; […]
Does the word Medical have any relation with the Medes people?
At first, I thought “oh come on!” Then I thought “hey, I should check.” Now I think “probably not, but it was worth checking”. medical comes ultimately from Latin mederi “to heal, give medical attention to, cure”: Online Etymology Dictionary. In turn, this ultimately derives from the Indo-European stem *med– (Pokorny’s dictionary), “to measure; to […]
In what situations would you use an article in English where you wouldn’t in Modern Greek? And vice-versa?
Rather than make up an answer, I googled and am posting from the first blog I found: Πότε δεν χρησιμοποιούμε το οριστικό άρθρο the Proper names in Modern Greek always take a definite article. It’s quite rare in English: rivers, families, plural countries. Nouns with generic reference take a definite article in Modern Greek and […]
How does the Modern Greek pronoun το modify verbs?
As a pronoun, το is the clitic accusative neuter third person pronoun, and it corresponds to “that” or “it”. So, ξέρω “I know”; το ξέρω “I know that”. Which means that, in the first instance, το is not modifying the meaning of a verb; it is completing it by providing an explicit object. You could […]
What is the Modern Greek equivalent of the English phrase “I know, right?”
Good question. The English phrase expresses acknowledgement of the interlocutor’s surprise at something the speaker has just said. The Greek idiomatic equivalent, I’d say, is Είδες; “See?” Updated 2016-07-18 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-is-the-Modern-Greek-equivalent-of-the-English-phrase-I-know-right/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Why doesn’t the verb take a third person singular form in past tense?
Brian is of course right, but I think he’s explained it a bit too quickly. Armed only with Old English grammar and Middle English from Wikipedia, behold the past tenses of verbs in action. I’m only going to pay attention to weak verbs, because that’s the pattern that has prevailed. Old English: Present ic hǣl-e […]
What are some of the names of the most important Ancient Greek newspapers?
Ah, Anon, Anon… A newspaper by any modern understanding of the concept presupposes widespread literacy, and, you know, paper. The Roman Acta Diurna were a daily gazette of government decisions published, Asterix style, in stone, and there may even have been equivalents in Greece for publishing what the assemblies had decided that day; but they […]
BS in English Linguistic and literature are different courses?
Not A2A. Michael Masiello, who is awesome in every way, is right in the question he answered, but wrong in the question I think OP intended. Linguistics and literature are indeed quite different fields of study. In fact, they have become more separate. Linguistics was invented to help literature study (rhetoric); and literature scholars draw […]
Could the names for the rivers Potomac, Thames, have any etymological connection with Greek potamos (=river)?
As for Greek potamos, I’ve checked in Dictionnaire-Etymologique-Grec : Chantraine (It’s online?! Download while you can!!!) Its likeliest source is as a noun derived from e-pet-on “to fall” (so, waterfall, torrent); but the meaning means that rivers always fall, which doesn’t sound right. The alternative derivation given, proposed by Wackernagel, is a relation to German […]
What is the difference between Creole and Patois?
Originally Answered: Is creole and patois the same thing? Why or why not? In a prescientific sense, of course. Patois is what French people called the corrupted gibberish that white people spoke in France, and Creole is what French people called the corrupted gibberish that brown people spoke in the colonies. Thank god for science, […]